…And The Truth Behind “We’re All Reading Teachers”

Last week, I discussed the serious problem many schools face when administrators absently name everyone on staff a “reading teacher.”

This has sincere implications.

For one, some educators and school leaders interpret this statement to mean we just need to addmore traditional reading and writing to the curriculum, such as the narrative writing example I discussed in math class, even if it pushes aside content.

Furthermore, this issue bears a sobering weight as we consider our time and finances. Teachers across the content areas are being required by their state DOE to take collegiate reading courses in order to maintain their certification.

When the “reading teacher” title gets tossed around carelessly without appropriate support, your staff—as serious and professional as they are—might burn out or respond with the playfulness of my colleagues (and apparently my current writing mood).

“What?! Oh heck no!”

Because you’re here, reading this non-required edu-article, I know you don’t blindly accept every claim on the table. If someone tosses around the “Research says…” adage, you don’t accept the argument as legitimate until the speaker has provided appropriate evidence. Because not only do you teach argumentative writing, you know how to form one yourself. Yeah, that’s right.

So when school leaders (at your district or the state-level) casually call everyone on staff reading teachers, you draw the line in disbelief: “What?! Oh heck no!” You may not want to accept that claim if it isn’t backed up with support.

“Hold up.”

Despite our skepticism, we are smart enough to get past this blanket statement and realize that maybe there’s more to this claim than smoke and frustration. If we start to understand the different types of literacy, we begin to see how reading and writing can actually support content mastery. “Hold up.” For real, it will allow us to move into our content with more depth.

Basic Literacy:

Generally taught in the first few years of elementary, this base-level of literacy focuses on decoding and knowledge of high-frequency words.

Secondary teachers, for the most part, do not have to teach basic literacy skills because students know how to read already. (Certainly, this doesn’t include students will significant gaps or special needs. They might receive basic literacy services in the upper grades.)

Middle and high school teachers can freak out by the “reading teacher” title when administrators haven’t narrowed the definition of reading to exclude this type of instruction.

Content Literacy:

This level of literacy transfers to all subjects because it focuses on generic comprehension strategies, study skills, and common word meanings.

As a whole staff workshop, I guide cross-content teachers through universal strategies like activating background knowledge, setting goals, summarizing, and more. This includes close reading, argumentative writing, and debate across the various disciplines. We’re all tired of teaching around the content when the students don’t read the assigned texts. These literacy strategies help students access the information independently, so we can dig deeper in class.

The thing is content literacy PD obviously supports teachers who use traditional text types (i.e. books, articles, etc.), but it can frustrate the teachers who instruct via non-traditional text types, such as lab demonstrations, mathematical equations, and artistic expression.

Disciplinary Literacy:

Specifically focused on the unique skills and tools that the experts in a discipline use, this last level of literacy needs explicit instruction from subject-area teachers.

Students need to learn to see each discipline through different literacy lenses. We don’t read in Biology the same way we do in Language Arts. Character maps aren’t going to help you out when you’re reading about cellular function.

Before students can do this, department and PLC teams must explore how the masters of their discipline read, write, speak, and think about the content:

How do engineers tackle problem solving?

What do historians do when they interpret primary source documents?

How do scientists use data to construct explanations?

What strategies do artists use to conceptualize their work?

Thoughtful literacy PD guides teachers through the various discipline-specific thinking skills and leads them to create authentic classroom applications for their students. Two weeks ago, I attended the Michigan Reading Association annual conference in Detroit and led a session discussing the finer points of disciplinary literacy. I love supporting secondary content masters as they deconstruct text structures, determine specialized vocabulary, and figure out the metacognitive strategies of their discipline.

How do we define “text?” What is the language of our tribe? How do experts think through our content?

“Huh? Oh okay.”

So when school leaders say “We’re all reading teachers,” they’re not say secondary teachers need to teach kids how to decode high-frequency words, nor are they asking teachers to simply add more traditional reading or writing assignments into their curriculum just for the sake of more literacy.

Rather, mindful school administrators recognize that those “reading teachers” actually need support revealing the dynamic cognitive processes that make each subject unique and compelling. “Huh?”

To be sure you’re picking up this language play, I’ll push it to say that as reading teachers we’re actually “mind-reading” teachers because this is exactly what we’re doing with disciplinary literacy:

We’re helping students see into the minds of subject-area experts: How do they read, write, and think, and how can I emulate that in my own practice?

Therefore, departments and PLCs must come together to craft authentic literacy work that supports stronger readers, writers, speakers, and thinkers specific to each discipline. “Oh okay.” No one would deny the plea for more authenticity in the classroom.

And while the “reading teacher” title is full of silly truths and lies, this is very serious and necessary work before us, so let’s have at it.

Thanks . . . to my math/physics colleague Chris Painter for always pushing our students (and me) to think about problem-solving in the most authentic ways. Also, I appreciate you letting me snag this picture from your classroom. Yes, friends, that is a student drawing of Mr. Painter pushing his mathematicians to construct viable arguments.

But wait–there’s more! If you like what you’ve read here, check out my resource page for products/downloads, share my workshop offerings with your administrator or School Improvement team, and join my mailing list below to receive posts sent directly to your inbox and a FREE resource.

Enter the eight mathematical practices! If you are a math teacher reading this blog, I am sure you are familiar with them already as you are motivated enough to seek outside resources in the pursuit of quality teaching and learning. If you haven’t seen them, they are an awesome summary of what I suspect many of us do when we solve problems (I know I was so happy to see there was finally common language describing what I do mentally while solving problems).

Yes, Chris! Thank you for bringing up the eight mathematical practices! I know that your students are fortunate to have these thinking skills displayed in your classroom as anchor charts. This brings that common language from the department right to your students. 🙂

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